DESCRIPTION: (Taken from the Application) This renewal proposal describes plans to continue a vigorous chemistry-biology interface (CBI) predoctoral training program that is designed to train scientists in key aspects of fundamental organic and biological chemistry as well as in scientific disciplines at the interface of chemistry and biology. The program, now in its fifth year, further advances the interdisciplinary training of our most motivated and well-qualified students by focusing their graduate academic work around a core curriculum of courses in areas spanning both chemical and biological disciplines. Each trainee may carry out his or her doctoral thesis research in one or more of the laboratories of the sixteen faculty trainers primarily affiliated with four participating units: the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (DCCB) the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics (DMBG); the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior (DNBB); and the Division of Nutritional Sciences (DNS). All participating faculty have strong research programs in various aspects of chemistry, and are well-funded by the National Institutes of Health. Their overall research interests are broadly distributed over synthetic inorganic, bioorganic, biophysical and polymer chemistry, as well as such fields as x-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, protein structure and function, enzymology, and immunology. CBI trainees attend seminars in their core disciplines (usually weekly) in their respective units, participate together with faculty in a special monthly CBI seminar program, and organize monthly CBI "literature lunches" where no faculty are present. Two additional features distinguish the Cornell CBI program. First, trainees invite, organize, and host special CBI seminar speakers each semester. Secondly, trainees are required to participate in internships in biotech, life science, or pharmaceutical companies, through which they gain exposure to, and experience in, interdisciplinary biomedical research in these respective industries.